Federal records show that before Joseph Bonanno allegedly conspired to have Tommy Lucchese and Carlo Gambino killed, the New York mob boss had already been accused of plotting to murder another crime family leader—Los Angeles boss Frank DeSimone. According to FBI files, in 1961 Bonanno allegedly formulated a plan to take over the Los Angeles … Read more
In the spring of 1889, a land surveyor named Elias Co walked into a valley in the Great Smoky Mountains that was supposed to have 41 people living in it. He carried the county ledger in his hand. He had the names. He had the tax receipts from the year before, signed and witnessed. What … Read more
In the summer of 1832, the American painter and traveler George Catlin stood on a low ridge overlooking the upper Missouri River and witnessed something he could barely bring himself to believe. A Sioux horseman, riding at full speed, drove an arrow into the shoulder of a massive bull buffalo estimated at 2,000 pounds. The … Read more
In 1861, the young Georgia poet Sidney Lanier, a recent Confederate Army enlistee, attended a mock medieval tournament in Kinston, North Carolina. Watching mounted Confederate officers dressed as knights competing for the honor of a local belle, he was enraptured. To him, the scene was a metaphor for the war itself—the South as a gallant … Read more
The destruction of three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9 is often taught as a simple story of imperial arrogance meeting savage revenge. Tight lines of legionaries were supposedly overwhelmed by a screaming tide of barbarians pouring out from between the trees. That version survived for centuries, but it is wrong. The … Read more
In the winter of 1910, a mail carrier named Virgil Combs was riding his mule along a frozen creek in the hills of southern Missouri. He was carrying a canvas bag of letters and a small package of medicine for the Tipton general store. He never reached the store. His mule was found three days … Read more
Judy Garland was found dead on the morning of June 22, 1969, in the bathroom of a rented house in London’s Chelsea district. Her fifth husband, Mickey Deans, discovered the locked door and eventually climbed to the roof to look through the window. She was 47 years old, had been famous since she was a … Read more
On the night of May 2, 1957, Frank Costello walked through the lobby of the Majestic Apartments on Central Park West in Manhattan. He was wearing a tailored suit and a felt hat, moving the way he always did. He nodded at the doorman and stepped toward the elevator. He never made it. A heavy-set … Read more
For more than two centuries, a weapon carried by Indigenous warriors across a vast stretch of North America has been misunderstood. It was a wooden club carved to look like the stock of a musket, and it was deadly in close combat — not because it fired a bullet, but because it crushed bone and … Read more
In the winter of 1871, a Viennese crystal assessor named Kasimir Brandt was called to a dismantled estate outside Salzburg to evaluate a set of chandelier components. His professional training had prepared him for nearly every grade of crystal that passed through the largest glassworks of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. What he found in those crates … Read more